


a look never hurt this much

by tmgetpegged (grace_the_ace)



Category: Tiny Meat Gang (Band)
Genre: M/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 18:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19481335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grace_the_ace/pseuds/tmgetpegged
Summary: The man’s gone before Noel can even open his mouth, and before he knows it, Aleena’s there to get him home and tucked into bed, safe and sound. The whole night feels like a strange blur, unreal and yet the realest thing Noel’s experienced in months, maybe even since he moved away from home.





	a look never hurt this much

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tonsilfoodcourt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonsilfoodcourt/gifts).



In a world with a better system for finding love, Noel’s never known a day without the letters CK clearly and cleanly printed on his left wrist in silver. It’s one of his constants: his name is Noel Miller, he likes making people laugh more than anything else in the world, and his soulmate, whoever they are, has the initials CK. Right after he learns how to write his own name, he memorizes the curves and sharp edges of his soulmate: it’s one of the first lessons in schools around the world, and his education was no different. By the time he’s six years old, with _all_ the letters under his belt, C and K are his favorite letters.

His family all tease him constantly, suggesting bizarre names for the mystery girl. Noel comes home one day, excited about the new Greek unit in history, and instead ends up mildly traumatized by the suggestion that his soulmate is a born-again Circe. Noel’s grown up imagining everything from the color of CK’s eyes to what exactly the C stands for. He’s considered everything from Carly to Chloe, and later on in life, Connor to Chris as well. (In a fit of pique one day, he considers the names Cassiopeia and Clyde. His sister asks if he’s referring to the horse or the criminal. He wiggles his eyebrows and asks if it matters, just to hear her laugh.) He’s self aware enough, after some interesting years of exploration, to know that his soulmate could be _anyone_ , could look like anything.

He grows up some more, and does his best to discard the way he feels about his destiny like an old pair of socks. The only time it really works is up on stage, telling jokes and making people laugh. When he wonders why, a few too many drinks in, his soon-to-be best friend Aleena tells him that it’s good to laugh at yourself sometimes. He grows into himself even more after that, stumbling onto a new comedy app entirely by chance, where he manages to plunge into mild popularity. He spends most of his time working, either on ‘real’ jobs or on the app, and all of his time ignoring his soulmate mark. It’s a lot easier to ignore the anxiety inherent in the proof of destiny sketched out on his wrist when he’s too busy making stupid videos and writing even more stupid code.

Noel’s actually thirteen hours into another last minute job, and isn’t _that_ fantastic, thank you marketing, when his screen lights up with a message from a rather familiar username.

_koke.head: hey bro i love ur vids, do u wanna work together sometime? hmu (10:23pm)_

Noel tries to surreptitiously grab his phone to respond. He doesn’t really have time for this, but this guy works magic with his audience. Noel might not always get why he’s seen as so much funnier than anyone else, but he certainly understands the more physical appeal. He’s been working his ass off for two weeks on this project, and he hasn’t gotten laid in _much_ longer. It’s easy to understand anyone’s physical appeal at this point

_hoel.filler: Hey dude!! You’re funny as hell, I’d love to. Got any ideas? (10:27pm)_

Despite his suppressed excitement, he knows that that message is probably as far as anything will go. Everybody wants to make videos together and nobody wants to actually _do_ anything, one of the most frustrating parts of the damn app. Noel puts his phone back down with a small sigh and gets back to work on his stupid project, already mentally calculating how much longer he can go without taking a break for the office’s shitty black coffee. There’s a kind of magic in the way the screens swim with letters and numbers after the sixteenth hour of working on the same shit, though it gets less magical when it’s time to drive home and he can’t see straight. Sleeping in the office is _seriously_ taking its toll on his spine. Noel mentally shakes himself and gets back to work, albeit with a promise to buy himself good coffee to keep at the office after this project.

When Noel half wakes up after finally managing to get home and sleep for fifteen hours, it’s to several new messages, surprisingly enough.

_koke.head: ya actually lol. u wanna meet up to brainstorm n maybe film? (9:02am)_

_koke.head: if not that’s totlaly cool i dont want to come on too strong loll (10:48pm)_

_koke.head: totally* (10:56pm)_

They’re the only messages on his phone: everyone else knows he’s dead for two days after a project goes live. Even half asleep, they make him smile, the only reason he responds when he can’t see clearly yet.

_hoel.filler: Yeah brp, I’m inthe La area rigjt now. WHerw d u wanna meet? (5:04am)_

_hoel.filler: alsk so I donr get murderd. What’s yiur name? (5:05am)_

Sleepy and satisfied with his message, Noel shuts his phone off and rolls back over to get as much sleep as he possibly can before he’s back on another project. His incoherency is a problem for a later Noel, and so he leans into dreams of another place with another person, warm and no longer lonely, even alone in a little bed in the middle of a big city.

It takes him a few more hours and a really nice coffee to _actually_ wake up enough to notice he’s got more messages. He’s got a text from his best friend and few more messages from koke.head that he has to resist opening first.

_Aleena: alright you’ve got that project done and I’ve given you your two days. we’re going out tonight, and you have no excuse (8:22am)_

Her message makes Noel smile even as he types out his response.

_Noel: I mean, I definitely can find an excuse still.. Where to, motherfucker (9:59am)_

_Noel: You better not drag me to the fucking Vault. You know I hate that club. (10:00am)_

_Aleena: it’s a secret ;))) (10:01am)_

Noel decides that her text doesn’t even deserve a response, and quickly moves on, forcing himself not to be too eager for his next messages only to realize there’s no one around to see his excitement.

_koke.head: are you like ok dude?? (7:22am)_

_koke.head: im just gonna fill in the blanks here lol (7:30am)_

_koke.head: im free tomorrow if u wanna go to like starbucks or something so nobody has to dox themselves lmao (7:30am)_

_koke.head: and my name’s cody, if it wasnt mentioned earlier my bad. whats urs (7:31am)_

The last message sends Noel’s heart rate soaring. There’s no reason to believe that this guy is _his_ guy, but no matter how much scolding or rationalizing he tries, his pulse isn’t slowing down. There’s plenty of people with C names. Noel can _not_ do this every single time he meets one, no matter how funny or attractive they may be.

_hoel.filler: Sorry for those messages, I was still mostly asleep when I sent them (10:11am)_

_hoel.filler: I’m Noel. Nice to officially meet you lol. Tomorrow’s Saturday, right? (10:11am)_

_hoel.filler: I can meet you at like one tomorrow at the starbucks on fifth avenue? (10:12am)_

It feels like no time at all before Aleena’s barging into his apartment, heels barely hanging onto her fingertips as she picks out his outfit for the night. “You need better clothes, babes. You can’t wear the same jeans over and over again and expect different results.”

Noel can tell she’s pregamed by the easy way she drops terms of endearment into her sentences and by the way she leans into him as she straps her heels on. He waits till she’s steady on her own to respond to her pointed commentary. It’s an old argument of theirs, reiterated every time she decides to drag him out of his lonely hideaway and into the rest of the world.

“I wear other things! I just don’t understand why I need more pants when I’m always in my work ones, anyways.”

She smirks at his useless protests before throwing his tightest pair of pants at him. “You’re making _me_ work double time, what with your flat ass. I know a couple of moves that’ll help with that, you know!” Aleena has to shout the last words through Noel’s bathroom door before she bursts into laughter, the kind that only comes out when they get drunk together.

It takes him a few deep breaths and an extended shimmy into his pants, but they finally get out the door together, off to a club Aleena promises him is “much better than the Vault, Noel, they’ve got the most amazing drinks. Have you ever had a smoking drink? No? You’re missing out, honestly hun, they’re the coolest thing on the planet. Cooler than moping about in your dumb apartment, that’s for sure.”

Noel’s only two admittedly amazing drinks in when he loses Aleena somewhere in the crowd with a wink and a grin. He stays by the bar, watching the bartender hand out more glowing drinks that taste deceivingly like sugar in the dark of the club, unable to see much beyond his own nose besides the exit lights. The low visibility means that when a man about his height leans in to ask over the loud music if he could buy him a drink, he’s more than a little surprised. Noel takes a considering second and decides he’s had enough, shaking his head before realizing the other man had meant it as more of a conversation starter.

“No thanks, man, I’ve got to wake up at some point tomorrow,” he shouts over the music.

The man winks at him terribly. “You a lightweight, bro? No worries though. I get it, I’ve gotta be up tomorrow, too.”

The stranger manages to address and immediately soothe Noel’s worries in a way that most people never quite manage. It might be nice, to not rely entirely on Aleena, he thinks before he realizes he’s just started imagining a future with a stranger he can’t see or even hear properly. Noel realizes a lot of things in that moment, like time’s slowed down in this too-dark club just for him. He realizes that this man is flirting with him, he realizes that he’s a lot less drunk than he was a few minutes ago, and he realizes that this could be his one shot at getting laid for the next few months. Noel mixes all of these realizations together, and mentally says fuck it.

“Wanna dance?” The words surprise himself nearly as much as they surprise the stranger, thrown out almost violently. Noel starts to regret saying them as the seconds tick by without a response, turning to go when he feels a little too scrutinized.

The man grabs Noel’s left wrist, keeping him from turning around.

“I’d love to dance with you, you just surprised me is all.”

Noel can feel his face heat up even as the voice prods at something in the back of his mind, familiar in a way two-far-too-alcoholic-drinks-Noel can’t place and immediately decides to discard in favor of staying upright as he’s more or less dragged through the crowd. They come to a pretty abrupt stop as the music switches to something even more sexual than the previous songs and the man turns to him. He runs his hands through his hair in what seems to be a nervous habit, grinning a bit sheepishly. Noel decides now is as good a time to find his guts as any, and reaches out to grab his arm, pulling them closer together to actually dance.

“You drag me out here to dance and then don’t dance? You’d think I forced you out here,” Noel shouts into his ear, pausing as the man laughs and turns around. Noel’s forgotten what it’s like to go to a club and just forget yourself in the bodies and music, forgotten just _how_ people dance in the dark. It’s a bit jarring, and he hopes the few seconds he’s stood frozen aren’t noticeable to the stranger, now close enough that Noel can feel his body heat. The beat consumes them, turning them into two more mindless cogs in the machine, sweating as the bass echoes through their rib cages. It’s dark and too hot, but Noel’s feeling more alive than he has in a while, and he mentally reminds himself to thank Aleena.

The man leans his head back on Noel, laughing breathlessly in that way people do when they’re too happy and too drunk, still grinding back into his whole body. It’s the roll of his hips combined with the way his neck looks leaned back, finally visible in the middle of a neon dance floor, that get Noel to grab him and lead them over to the edge of the room.

The man raises his eyebrows and grins suggestively at Noel as he’s backed into the probably disgusting wall. Noel leans in slower than he usually would, double checking that this is okay, only to get cut off by the other man tilting his head forward to speed things up. It’s weirdly blissful, kissing heatedly in a dark grimy club with no air conditioning. The music fades to a low buzz in Noel’s ears as they make out for what could be minutes or hours, both equally likely for how disorienting the other man’s lips seem to be. The building could fall down around his ears and he wouldn’t notice, as long as he can get his mouth on this stranger’s neck.

He’s busy sucking his second mark into his skin when a jarring ringing noise comes to his attention, bringing the rest of the world back into focus even as the other man seems sharper than everything around him. Noel snorts as the stranger makes a face and pulls out his phone to answer.

“Devon? What the fuck-“

The rest of the conversation is hard to hear over the music, so Noel contents himself with watching the way the man’s silhouette moves in the dim light.

“Hey, listen, I’m _really_ sorry about this, but my dumbass friend fell and broke his arm, so I’ve got to go, the Uber’s already outside.”

The man’s gone before Noel can even open his mouth, and before he knows it, Aleena’s there to get him home and tucked into bed, safe and sound. The whole night feels like a strange blur, unreal and yet the realest thing Noel’s experienced in months, maybe even since he moved away from home. As soon as Aleena gets him undressed and in bed, though, he’s sound asleep despite his recent sleep marathon.

Going to bed may not have been an issue, but getting up to the sound of his alarm certainly is. It takes three snoozes to even open his eyes, and two more to get up and make himself coffee. Noel’s sipping at his coffee when he glances down at his left wrist and spots his mark, dropping his phone in shock. One of his three constants, pulled out from under him like tablecloth from under plates in the shittiest of jokes. Noel needs to sit down. His mark changed over night, and it doesn’t take much thinking to figure out just who caused the shift from silver to gold. It’s relieving until he realizes he has absolutely no way to contact him, and that it’ll be impossible to find him in a place like LA.

He’d like to sit and take a few hours to mourn the loss of what’s supposed to be the most important person of his life, though he takes _that_ with a large grain of salt, but he’s supposed to meet Cody in an hour and he’s still in just his underwear. He’ll have to rush to make it to the Starbucks early, but he’d like to order his sugary “monstrosity” without judgement from someone he’s trying to impress.

Noel’s honestly shocked he’s made it before 12:55. The line’s short, so he orders quickly and sits down to wait, messy hair mostly covered with a grey baseball hat. It’s easy enough to get engrossed in his Twitter feed, head ducked down and carmel macchiato quickly drained. It’s exactly one o’clock when he’s interrupted, a familiar voice in sharp focus against the murmur of the coffee shop.

“Hey, you’re Noel, right? Can I sit down?”

Noel looks up from his phone and feels his jaw drop, separate from his body for a second as he draws in the sight before him. He feels a bit like an idiot, finally connecting the familiar voice from last night with the man standing in front of him.

“Holy fucking- I mean- Yes, and yes.” Noel spots two hickeys on the side of Cody’s neck as he sits down with his plain drink, and inhales sharply at the confirmation. A familiar voice is one thing. Two bruises in the exact spots Noel remembers biting down on last night? That must be more than coincidence. There’s a moment of awkward silence.

They both try to break it at once. “You-“ “I-“

“You first, sorry.”

Noel swallows thickly, month suddenly too dry. He really should’ve saved some of his coffee for this. “You were at the club last night, right? I’m not imagining things, you had to leave for your friend’s broken arm like some fucked up Cinderella.”

Cody looks like he’s just been smacked upside the head. “That- You’re _you_?? Holy shit.”

Cody suddenly rolls up his sleeve, knocking over his coffee in his ardor. They both scramble for the cup, trying to keep the hot drink from spilling. Noel somehow manages to steady the cup as Cody grabs napkins and wipes up his mess, both of them laughing a little bit at the sudden adrenaline rush. Cody rolls up his sleeve, more cautiously this time, and throws his wrist out in front of him. Noel numbly notices that Cody’s hands are shaking just like his own. He has to force his eyes from Cody’s hand to his wrist, spotting his own initials in a brilliant gold on his pale skin. It takes seeing NM on someone else for the first time to shock him out of his frozen state. Noel immediately rolls up his sleeve to show Cody the golden letters, speaking up to get him to open his eyes.

“Cody. Cody, look. _Look_. These turned gold after last night, after I kissed you. That makes us soulmates. We’re fucking soulmates, holy shit dude.” Noel has to stop, if only to laugh a little bit disbelievingly. “I didn’t think I’d ever meet my soulmate, and here you are.”

Cody finally opens his eyes, staring at the CK emblazoned on Noel’s arm as a grin like sunshine spreads. It’s hitting them both like a sack of bricks, the realization that they’ve found each other. Cody’s smile turns up at the corner as he winks at Noel, holding out his hand. “Hi there. My name’s Cody Kolodziejzyk, and I’m pretty sure I’m your soulmate.”

Noel’s confusion turns into bright amusement. He takes Cody’s hand, shaking it twice before turning it over to hold in both hands.

“My name’s Noel Miller, and I’m positive you’re mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> noel makes fun of cody for his last name immediately after this jsyk. this is a gift for piss bc she's amazing and deserves good things that's all! find me at tmgetpegged.tumblr.com


End file.
